Final Fantasy XIV Open Beta Breaks Records With More than 120,000 Concurrent Connections, Needs Tanks

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Rebornjust entered its full open beta phase this early morning, and it’s already breaking records, as explained by Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida via the game’s official Japanese twitter account (you can read my translation under every embedded tweet):

FFXIV: A Realm Reborn Producer and Director Yoshida here. Thank you for taking part in the testing (open beta test), we have a situation with more than 120,000 people connected at the same time, so we’ll add two new Japanese servers.

In addition to this, in order to facilitate the login of new players we will implement character creation restriction on the Japanese servers for a while starting at 10 PM. We apologize for the inconvenience and we thank you for the cooperation so that everyone can play comfortably.

He followed up by announcing that two new servers, named Typhon and Ultima were made available for beta testers.

It’s interesting to note that the previous concurrent connections record for a Japanese online game was previously held by Sega’s Phantasy Star Online 2, with 107,259 players connected at the same time achieved just on July the 24th. It didn’t last long, even if, to be fair, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn gathers players from the whole world. Maybe Sega should really think about that as well, instead of holding off on the localization.

As a partly related tidbit of trivia Yoshida-san also appealed for beta testers to play tanks, as quite obviously most veteran players are playing Arcanists since it’s the new class introduced with the open beta, causing an imbalance.

FFXIV: A Realm Reborn Producer and Director Yoshida here. By the way, it appears that we don’t have enough marauders and gladiators in Eorzea at the moment. Please pick up the shield to protect your fellow players! Please consider leveling a gladiator or a marauder!

Looks like I’m needed in the game, but I’m stuck reporting news here for a while, will you respond to Yoshida-san’s appeal? Are you going to pick up a shield or an axe and dedicate yourself to protecting the newbies?